Versace bets on 360 degree marketing

Capri Holdings, the new owner of Versace, is investing in marketing and brick-and-mortar stores as it aims to double sales of the luxury fashion brand to $2bn.

“We’re going to spend a lot more money on marketing, powerful marketing,” Capri chairman and CEO John Idol told an investor day conference yesterday: “everything from campaigns that you see digitally to how we’re going to drive consumers to our website as well through performance marketing.”

Versace CEO Jonathan Akeroyd acknowledged that the brand’s past marketing had been “old-school” – driven by fashion shows four times a year, and advertising campaigns with leading photography talent.

“We’ve now restructured our marketing team totally with a view to having a much stronger 360-degree approach to connect with everything that we’re doing,” he explained.

That starts with existing shows and campaigns, before “drilling that right down into how we can then touch that through in terms of product placement, product marketing and then working that through to our in-store experience as well”.

Its fall 2019 campaign, for example, begins by following the existing template, before moving into new territory for the brand: “we’ve now got 100 extra assets focusing on key product, accessories, footwear,” Akeroyd said.

“We can really push this through to create a much more product-focused marketing campaign across social and also with directly linking it in with our in-store experience.

And there will be around 50% more stores for consumers to have that experience, as Idol signalled an intention to grow the brand’s physical retail presence from around 200 stores to 300, with a slight bias towards Asia.

“We’re on the move doing that very rapidly,” he said. “We will be on the streets where you see our other luxury competitors.”

At the same time, Versace will accelerate its e-commerce and omnichannel efforts – an area where it currently lags, he admitted.

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